Saturday, December 29, 2012

Usually when I have a story from my life I exaggerate the
hell out of it for humor’s sake. Today I have an absolutely true Christmas tale
that needs no hyperbole. I’ve been having trouble with mice getting into my
trailer this winter. I plugged a hole under my sink and re-covered a spot in
the living room where they were getting in. I’ve also been feeding them poison
which they’re eating like candy. Still I hadn’t seen or heard one in about two
weeks. Then it was Christmas.

2:30 a.m. Christmas morning I was awoken by a strange noise,
like scratching and bumping around the wall behind my bed. It happened enough
that I finally got out of bed and turned on the lights. I got a flashlight,
shining it behind my nightstand and that’s when I saw it. Walking near my power
strip was a brown field mouse dragging a piece of Dove chocolate. You may ask,
“How could you possibly know it was Dove chocolate?” The answer is I could read
the word “Dove” across the top of the square.

My first thought was “Am I still asleep. Is this a dream?”
It was after all 2:30 a.m. But I quickly realized I had actually seen a mouse
dragging a piece of chocolate. My next thought was “Where did it get a piece of
chocolate from?” Suddenly it hit me. I ran down the hallway to my living room.
My wrapped gifts were under my Christmas tree and there was the evidence.

My brother loves dark chocolate so I had taped a piece to
each of his packages. The mouse had chewed away the foil from the piece of Dove
chocolate and dragged it back the hallway into my bedroom. By the time I went
back I couldn’t find him again so I figured he must have left the same way he
got in. At 4:30 a.m. I finally went back to bed Christmas morning.

When I got up a few hours later I found that the mouse had
nibbled at all the pieces of chocolate so it all had to be thrown away. He had
also crapped on two of the packages so I had to re-wrap them.

Later in the day my brother came up to my place and we found
a spot of the floor that had collapsed causing a hole between the foundation
and the wall. We did a little MacGyver work, filling in the hole with garden
rocks, shoring up the baseboard with a few pieces of fake wood my brother had
in the trunk of his car and then covering it with a piece of left over tile
from when I re-did my bathroom a few years ago.

That is my Christmas tale. If anyone from Disney or Pixar is
reading this and wants to make a blockbuster movie from my story call, email,
text, send a postcard, send up a smoke signal, carrier pigeon, a hand written
letter on tasteful stationary, whatever. Let’s make a movie!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

I make the
mistake of reading the comments section sometimes of articles I read online or
of videos I watch on YouTube. I say it’s a mistake because it always makes me
sad for the amount of ignorance that is displayed in these statements. Also
defensiveness and vitriol. Comments sections sometimes resemble cesspools of
nuclear waste.

At
lunchtime at work I sometimes peruse a web site called Deadspin. It is in
itself its own pond of sewage. Ostensibly a sports site, they run mostly
stories that other sites don’t and then proceed to slag off the people
involved. They also print rumors and conjecture. They admit up front of no
proof for their post but write about it anyway as though their admission
absolves them of guilt when the proverbial shit splatters the fan blades.

My
favorite articles are the re-telling of supposedly bad behavior by sports
commentators or journalists. Again, no fact checking is done, the stories could
be true or complete fabrications, Deadspin doesn’t care. Usually in the comment
section this will prompt people to write about their own supposed encounters
with semi-famous people behaving badly. This will always be followed by someone
commenting “I totally believe so-and-so would do something like that.” Really?
Someone with a screen name that contains 3 expletives and has an avatar with a
scene from a movie no one saw because that makes him ultra-cool and hip, writes
a story and presents no proof beyond the phrase “I swear this is true” and you
totally believe it? Of course, the next question is why I continue to read this
kind of shit and I don’t have a good answer.

I like to
watch videos on You Tube of heavy metal bands I’m not familiar with to see if
I like their music. Reading the comments sections is an exercise in pedantry
and juvenile behavior. There is always the inevitable argument over what
sub-genre of metal the band is performing:

Metalhead #1: I love black metal!

Metalhead #2: This isn’t black metal. This is death
metal.

Metalhead #3: No way. These guys aren’t metal enough to
be death metal. This is pansy power metal.

Metalhead #4: You’re all idiots. This is funeral doom
metal at its finest.

Metalhead #1: Funeral Doom?????? Are you out of your
mind?????

Metalhead #3: Doom!!!!??? Justin Bieber is closer to
doom metal than this band!!!!!!!!!

This
conversation goes on for 8 pages worth of comments with the expletives flying
fast and furious. Everyone is an idiot or a moron for having an opinion that
differs from say, FatSam34 or IChokeOnMetal666. I’m an idiot for wasting my
time reading the thread, but it makes me laugh.

If you
decide to comment on this post about commenting on other people’s posts, be
sure to call me an appropriate name, make up a new and colorful swear word and
act like your opinion is superior to mine, even though that is pedantically not
possible.

By the
way, that video was totally German power pop glam metal. Morons.

Friday, December 14, 2012

I spent this Friday evening cleaning my bathroom. I know,
what a way to spend a night but even though as a single male I can live in a
fair amount of my own dirt, even I have limits. When the hair in the shower
drain compiles so high it creates a new life form who slowly gains sentience, it
might be time to clean.

When the dirt on the shower curtain hardens and breaks off
in chunks and you examine it only to find gold flakes embedded inside, it’s
probably time for some soap and water.

When you buy a toilet brush made from tungsten filaments and
after two hours of scrubbing using an industrial mining drill to turn the
brush, you still can’t get the toilet bowl clean, you may have waited too long
to clean the bathroom.

When you find out friends are telling people the most
terrifying moment of the lives was using your bathroom and that the visions of
gargoyles eating their face took a month to subside, that is definitely a sign
you have waited too long to clean.

So I spent my Friday evening scrubbing my shower and toilet,
sweeping and mopping the floor and washing down the sink and counter tops. I
should be good until next December. Kidding. I’ll probably do it early, maybe
around Thanksgiving.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

I have a
mouse. And I don’t mean a “pet” mouse, I mean a fat brown vermin who has
decided it’s too cold outside and he wants to live indoors. My first discovery
of my new friend was Sunday morning. Watching TV I thought I saw movement out
of the corner of my eye. A few minutes later he popped his head out from under
the TV stand, flipped a tiny mouse finger at me and was gone again.

I don’t have
anything against mice as long as they stay outside. This one took up residence
without even asking or chipping in for rent. I tried to play nice. I drew up an
agreement splitting household chores and the bills, but he refused to sign. He
hired some lawyer from the back of the phone book who’s trying to sue me saying
that the mouse’s family lived here before I moved in so I’m actually the
squatter. He claims his great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great great great grandfather is the original tenant,
having dug a nest under my home years ago.

So now I’m
due in court in a few weeks to defend my territory. Who knew mice could be so
litigious? The whole thing may be settled long before the first word of
testimony though. I set out some poison and he ate the entire box. Greedy
bastard.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Last
Wednesday I was still a mild mannered inhabitant of the planet earth, walking
zombie-like through my days as an office drone, eating frozen pizza and channel
surfing through 118 channels of reality shows and programs that are labeled
“comedies” but really just kind of make me sad. Then the muffler strap on my
car broke. I looked at it and thought to myself “I can replace that”. Instantly
I was transformed into “Car Repair Man”!

Now
understand that there are monkeys in the jungles or Borneo
that know more about cars than I do. Also know that tools and I do not get
along. I swear at them, they refuse to work the way they’re supposed to and it
devolves into me yelling at inanimate objects until the neighbors calm me down
using cocoa laced with mood stabilizing drugs. But the muffler strap looked
innocent enough.

Wearing
the cape, fur boots and glittery golden mask of “Car Repair Man”, Thursday
morning I jacked my car up to take the rear tire off to give me more room to
work. With the lug nuts removed I pulled on the tire . . . and it didn’t budge.
I kicked the tire and it called me a jerk. I hit the tire and it called me
stupid. Reaching into my superhero utility belt I pulled out a can of WD 40,
spraying a generous amount around the wheel spokes. Still, the tire would not
move. But we superheroes have a steely resolve. I went back to hitting and
kicking the tire with the flailing arms and legs of a child throwing a hissy
fit. It didn’t work. By now the tire was laughing at me, telling the brake
rotor jokes about my genetic makeup and cultural heritage. I have to admit the
tire had good material. It could have paneled with Carson easily.

I reached
again for my WD 40 releasing a mighty stream of the lubricating liquid until
the tire had no choice but to surrender. As I pulled it off it said in a weary
voice, “Tell the left side suspension .
. . I love her.” Finally having room to work I took a good look at the broken
strap. It was still held on by a metal shaft stuck through a 3 inch thick hunk
of rubber. The technical car name for this is “that rubber doohickey”. For
removal I had to spray a lot of WD 40 into the hole, grab hold of the strap
with a pair of pliers, twist that rubber doohickey 180 degrees and pull like
hell. The technical term for this maneuver is “holy shit is this really how you
take one of these bitches off this is such a pain in the ass why won’t it come
off I don’t want to waste the whole day replacing a $28 muffler strap I have
other stuff to do please come off you piece of shit”.

Success!
At last the old strap was removed! Angels descended from the clouds to sing me
a chorus of triumph while I stood with my arms akimbo, beaming a beneficent
light as “Car Repair Man”. Putting the new strap on took less than 10 minutes.
The tire was back in place in another 5 and it was time for me to change back
into a mild mannered citizen of Earth.

Look! In
the driveway! Is it . . . some guy? No! Is it . . . another slightly different
guy? No! It’s Car Repair Man!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

I can’t
stand the cabal of conservative pundits that pollute the air waves, spewing
their bile and flinging their feces around like enraged monkeys. I believe they
are contemptuous of their “fans” that have made them rich by listening and
watching their programs and buying their insipid books. They simply hit upon a
way to get rich. They feed a certain segment of our population ignorant, racist
and disingenuous fecal matter and for some reason the people eat it up like
mashed potatoes.

I have
been laughing my ass off listening to them try to spin the reason their boy Mitt
got flattened like new asphalt by a steamroller. I decided the only real way to
show my churlish discontent was with . . . dirty limericks:

Monday, November 5, 2012

For the love of God get this election over with I can’t
watch another political TV ad or listen to another radio ad or receive another
email from the Democratic party of York County asking me for money you’re
asking me for money you should be giving me money I’m in debt because I was out
of work and then had to work two jobs to make ends meet and you’re asking me
for money shut up leave me alone and do you believe I’m going to make my
decision on who to vote for due to your ads I couldn’t care less you’re all
liars anyway none of you tell the truth about anything and it’s no better on
the state level ad after ad after ad each contradicting the previous one lie
lie lie lie lie lie lie the money you spent on all these ads that no one is
paying attention to could have started businesses which then could have hired
people putting them back to work it could have stocked soup kitchens and
shelters with food clothing blankets anything they needed it could have funded
cancer research Parkinson research ALS research there are so many better places
that money could have been spent please please please please please end this
election

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Over the
past month I’ve posted several comments on Facebook about my local radio
stations. I’m starting to feel like a grouchy old man yelling “Hey you DJs, get
off my lawn!” The thing is I don’t even listen to the radio much, only when I’m
in the car going to and from work, so maybe an hour a day. And yet in that
short time many things manage to irritate me.

I have 8
different stations programmed into my car stereo and yet can’t find a song to
listen to:

Station 1: And now our 43rd traffic
update in the last 20 minutes. Of course we’re starting two counties over, 150
miles from wherever you are. We’ll get to the accident on your route only after
you’ve gotten caught in the traffic jam it created. (On a side note it seems
like at least twice a week in the Harrisburg
area a vehicle fire is reported. Cars are just bursting into flames in the Pennsylvania capital
city)

Station 2: Do you have warts? Hey, who doesn’t? Dr.
Womp’s patented wart removal system is the only proven . . .

Station 3: Billy the Bozo here with your afternoon
drive time joke of the day, taken directly from this month’s Reader’s Digest .
. .

Station 4: That was Train finishing up a 32 song
two hour commercial free jam here on 103.2 The Middle of the Road Light Rock
Station. We’ll be back in about an hour after these messages.

Station 5: Come on down to the Bigtown Used Car
Emporium and Carpeting Showcase for our semi-annual President’s Day sale . . .

Station 6: I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this
message . . .

Station 7: I’m Barack Obama and I approve this
message . . .

Station 8: That was Led Zeppelin and in a few
minutes we’ll have some Red Hot Chili Peppers. You know last night I tried
watching Dancing with the Stars, because, you know, my girlfriend loves that
show. So I’m watching it, and tell me if you think this is weird by either
calling 309-4567 or hitting me up on twitter
@boringdjwon’tshutupaboutpersonallife, I was really taken by the dancing
ability of that chick that stars on that one show on Fox. You know, the one
that takes place in a city, can’t think of which one . . .

That’s
what I get to listen to on my drive home. I just want a song or two to sing
along to, let off some of the stress of the day. But all I get are commercials,
traffic reports about roads I don’t travel and wacky DJ patter.

All right
you hippy radio guys, get off my property. Andy Griffith is coming on and then
I have to go to bed before the sun goes down. And play a song once in a while!
Something young and hip, like Benny Goodman or Glenn Miller. Bah!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I go for
walks at night through a near-by housing development. I carry a flashlight but
I’m so familiar with the streets I don’t have to use it often. Usually only if
I see an animal moving ahead do I turn it on to see what I’m dealing with. I’ve
come close to a few skunks this summer. The other night I walked this one road
I don’t take often because there are no working streetlights and after the sun
goes down it’s as dark as Dick Cheney’s soul. About halfway down the street I
heard a noise behind me. It was a skittering or scratching on the pavement.
Just heavy enough to let me know it was there, but light enough to make it sound
creepy.

I did not
scream like a small girl. If the guy in the white house at the corner with the
azalea bushes says I did he’s lying. Did he talk to you? He’s a jerk, don’t
listen to him. I did not scream or run away with my arms and legs flailing
about like a baby giraffe learning to walk. I did freeze and peek over my
shoulder.

I’d like
to tell you what I saw, but I’m not sure. If only I’d had a FLASHLIGHT I could
have illuminated the creature. Oh yeah, I had one. And didn’t turn it on.
*sigh*

What I
could make out was the size of a small dog or a fox. It was too big for a cat,
and didn’t move the way they do. It didn’t move like a rabbit or possum. The
legs were too long for a raccoon. Convinced it was either a dog or a fox and
knowing it had stopped and was staring at me from behind I took a tentative
step forward. That’s when I heard it.

“I have
not dismissed you yet.”

The voice
was stern, but smooth as a finished piece of oak wood. There was a hint of a
British accent as well. As soon as I had thought of it the creature said:

“You’re
wondering about the accent. I was educated at Eton.”

Now is
when I should have yelled as if a vice were squeezing my lemons, but I was
oddly calm. The voice was soothing as well as commanding respect.

“This is
my road. No one walks here without paying me tribute.”

“What do
you want?” I asked.

“A sweater
vest sewn on the loom of a troll and 47 fast food ketchup packets. Not one more
or one less.”

“That’s
really what you want?” I asked incredulously.

“I have
spoken!”

I heard
the same clicking footfalls trail away from me and I knew he was gone. I
continued on my walk although I was shaking from the experience. Sweat was
creeping from my scalp even though it was a cool night. Who, or what, had I
been talking to? I kind of liked that street despite it being dark, but to walk
on it now I needed to find a troll. I mean the ketchup packets were easy, but a
troll? We’ve got some sprites and a kelpie in the neighborhood but no trolls
that I know of.

As I
departed the development my mind was still roiling with the night’s events. I
passed a trio of teenagers walking the other way, giggling about something. One
of them even had a British accent.

Friday, October 12, 2012

I was
bored at work one day this week so I wrote my name down and assigned each
letter a number. I ended up with:

3, 7,
17, 8, 18

I added
them together for 53. I multiplied them for a total of 51,408. When I
subtracted each digit I got -47 and when using division ended up with .000024.
I then added all the numbers together for a total of 51414.000024. Using my
assigned number system and the word “zero” to stand in for the 4 zeroes I gave
myself a new identity: Eadad Zerobd. Don’t ask me how to pronounce my new last
name because I don’t know. I then proceeded to create a back story for the new
me:

Eadad
Zerobd, originally born in Lithuania,
left his home country when he was thirteen as a member of the Lithuanian
National Circus. Starting out as an acrobat, after a ruptured spleen and a
large bruise in the shape of the Strait of Hormuz,
he was transferred to toe nail clipper for the elephants. He formed a quick
friendship with “Peanut”, a 12 ton Asian bull elephant. One evening in Brussels at a pub called
“A Place
to Get Drunk” after too many Belgian Blam Blams, Eadad and Peanut went on a
rampage through the city streets, destroying cars, buildings and killing two
Finnish tourists.

Afraid to
go to jail, Eadad disguised himself as a Frenchman by carrying a loaf of bread
everywhere he went and smelling like cheese. After a few months he stowed away
on a ship carrying scrap metal to New York
harbor in the United States.
Unfortunately the ship’s name was Harbinger of Doom and Eadad was found hiding
in a sack of potatoes in the kitchen. He was thrown overboard. It looked like
the end of the line for Eadad until he was taken in by a pod of humpback
whales.

The whales
created a blowhole in Eadad’s back, taught him to breech and how to consume a
ton of krill every day. It was an amazing life in the water. Eadad was sorry to
leave his cetacean friends but he had ballooned to 456 pounds from all the
krill and could barely breathe much less swim. He came ashore and started
walking on the beach to lose weight while living in the burned out body of an
’87 Impala and eating discarded tacos from the dumpster at Loco Flacco’s Taco
Hell.

Even after
he had lost the extra weight, Eadad continued walking, finally ending up in Pennsylvania. He took a
job as a state representative and lives comfortably off of kickbacks from the
bagel, croissant and muffin consortium.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

I had
Chinese for lunch and my fortune cookie told me “this is a wonderful time in
your life to look inward for answers”. Now I’ve taken advice from snack foods
before. A cinnamon roll told me once it was my lucky day and I should play the
lottery. 227 losing tickets later I couldn’t pay my rent but Mrs. Henrietta
Lautenschlager von Urm had an oversized check written out for $151 million so
she and her pug dog Wellsley could move into a mansion with carpeting on the
ceiling (Mrs. Von Urm was a bit of an iconoclast).

You’d
think I would have learned, but a few years later while eating a container of
caramel corn one of the kernels whispered to me that I should loosen up and
dance in the rain as if no one is watching. One lightning strike later I have a
titanium plate in my head that picks up FM98.7 The Cornstalk out of Demoines
every Thursday night during Moondog Murphy’s Six from the Sixties show. Really
Moondog? You have to play “I’m Henry the 8th”every week?

My point
is I have no reason to listen to this fortune cookie, but I’m a sucker for
words typed on rectangles of paper. I began my inward journey with the question:
Why? I’m not sure what answer I was expecting but I received a Jungian treatise
on the disingenuousness of my psyche that I would even ask that question. I
only understood about every fifth word and wondered why my soul was so much
smarter than me.

I decided to
press on and next asked: When? I girded myself for another lashing of words and
concepts I couldn’t grasp, instead receiving the answer “Thursday”.

By now I
was more confused than I am when I watch an old Italian-made Hercules movie. I
shouldn’t ask “why” and “when” is Thursday. What did it mean? I tried again and
asked: Are fortune cookies reliable forms of life philosophy?

The answer
came not from my inward machinery but from a chocolate chip cookie I was eating
at the time:

“Pour
yourself a glass of milk and stop trying to figure it all out you schmuck.”

I didn’t
think the “schmuck” comment was necessary but the milk was cold and the cookies
tasty. Maybe that’s all I need right now.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Romney
campaign announced today a new strategy their calling “Stealth Mitt”. According
to spokesman Ronald McDonald, the plan is for Mitt to disappear. No more
speeches, promotions, appearances or press conferences. “We want to play to
Mitt’s strength’s,” McDonald said. “His biggest asset is not saying anything.
Silence is Mitt Romney’s secret weapon.”

From now
on, the campaign said in a press release, no matter what happens in the world,
regardless of the severity of the incident, Mitt Romney will have no comment.
Assistant communications director of the Romney camp, Bozo Theclown, said “Mr.
Romney keeping his thoughts to himself is what’s best for the country. Let the
Democrats keep yapping. We’re on lockdown until the election.”

Asked what
they’re going to do about the scheduled debates, assistant to the assistant
campaign director Michael Scott had this to say, “Uh oh. I mean, of course Mr.
Romney will be allowed to, uh, what I mean to say is, future president Romney
will be speaking at the debates. Yes.”

Romney’s
top policy advisor, Ass Hat, is said to have been the architect of the new
strategy. Mr. Hat refused comment for this article but assistant policy maker
Barnum Bailey told us “We have every confidence in Mitt Romney to win the
presidency. But it’s our job to make the task smooth for him and keeping Mitt
out of the public eye is easier for everyone concerned.”

Obviously
it remains to be seen whether this new strategy works for the republican
candidate but the public seems to be all for it. In a poll conducted by Blind
Dog Research, 57% of those asked were thrilled to not have to look or listen to
Mr. Romney anymore. 23% were glad he wasn’t going to embarrass the human race
any further. 11% asked “Who is Mitt Romney?” 3% wondered how hot dogs were
made. 2% were angry they had missed voting in the election and then happy when
told they hadn’t missed it, although most admitted they probably won’t vote
anyway. 2% believe Mr. Romney looks like their uncle Floyd who they always
found “nice, but kind of peculiar”. 1% asked to borrow $20 from the poll takers
and 1% rapped their answers in undecipherable street slang.

I’m a very stupid man, the kind you don't nominate
for president
I will always let you down, once you get me in the spotlight
I like the boys on Wall street, they say I'm their all-time favorite
When I make my move to the White House
I’ll be impossible to please

I’m pretty boring now (I’m an imbecile)
The kind of man you read about (in the Wall Street Journal)
I’m stiff as a board (I’m an imbecile)
I’m a disappointment (to everyone I meet)
I’m all right, I’m all right, I’m all right with Ann, yeah, he-he-he
I’m an imbecile, imbecile, I’m super-dumb, yeow
Everybody sing, imbecile, imbecile

Mitt
Sings the Body Politic, available now
wherever fake recordings are sold!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Welcome to
the first annual People Who Don’t Watch the Republican or Democratic
Conventions Convention. We have a long list of speakers prepared for day one so
let’s get started. Oh, and if you’re peckish, in the back of the VFW hall we
have a wide assortment of luncheon meats, Albanian goat’s milk yogurt, durian
flavored thumb-print cookies, bitter coffee and watered-down tea.

Now, our first
speaker is here to tell us some details of the republican convention which he
watched from the comfort of his Loungeman 3000 easy chair while sipping a
tallboy of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Please welcome arc welder Gary Melch.

Gary:Yeah, uh, thank you, thanks. It’s nice to
see everyone, all . . . six of you. Uh,
I was supposed to fill you in, on, uh, what happened at the, um, convention
there. But you see I didn’t actually watch it like I’d planned. After I settled
into my chair there and popped open my beer I couldn’t find the remote so I
ended up watching that Honey Boo Boo show. I didn’t know she had sisters and
they have weird names too. I think one of them is Snickers and another is
called Rutabaga and the oldest I believe is Chickenfoot. Anyway I saw maybe
three hours of that. By then I was drunk and the show actually started to make
sense . . . a little. At least I could understand what they were saying which
was frightening.

Thank you Gary, for nothing. Go get
yourself a sandwich. Our next speaker watched, hopefully, the Democratic
convention and is going to fill us in. Please welcome local cheese log taste
tester, Kitty McFiggins.

Kitty:Hello. I
was asked to come here today to speak on the Democratic Convention. As far as I
know the president spoke, and probably the vice president and maybe some other
people. I’m sure the speeches had to do with things that the Democrats believe
in and possibly some bad things were said about republicans.

Kitty, it
sounds as if you didn’t watch the convention at all.

Kitty:Well, no.
You see I was . . . sort of . . . with Gary
. . . at the Red Lobster.

All 3
nights?

Kitty: No, just
the first one. The next night we went to the UnitedMethodistChurch Social, Barn Dance
and Covered Dish Spectacular.

And day 3?

Kitty:I’d
rather not say.

Gary: We were
in my Uncle Munchy’s camper.

Kitty:Gary . . .

Gary: We were naked.

Kitty:GARY!

Gary: I was out
of beer but still had a tallboy, if you know what I mean.

Kitty: Oh, Gary.

All right,
all right, Get off the stage, both of you. Well, this has been a tremendous
waste of time.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

No, no.
Remember, you said you were “severely” conservative. Now get over here before I
smack your nose with the constitution.

I really don’t want to change my positions.

You’re not
serious are you? You change positions every day. You flip and flop like a trout
on the bottom of a fishing boat. Besides, if you want to be president you’ll do
what you’re told. Here, read the party platform.

This . . . is . . . horrifying.

Yeah, it’s
good stuff. We had some young, female delegates who objected to a bit of the
language but we told them to shut up and bake some cookies. I love cookies.
Anyway, the Republican Party isn’t about youth or women; it’s about old, rich,
white men. Like you.

I’m not that rich . . .

And I’m
not a liberal journalist so don’t try to sell me cow shit and say it’s mud pie.

Huh?

Son, we
didn’t choose you as our candidate because we like you or think you can win or
because we believe in you. We chose you because we had to pick someone . . .
and . . . you were there. You’re like Mt.Everest.
Why will people vote for you? Because you’re there.

But my ideas . . .

The less
said about them the better. Mum’s the word. Now I’m going to roll the party
platform up into a tube and tie it up with strips of flesh from the working
class. Then I’m going to throw it and you’re going to fetch.

I have a fundraiser to get to . . .

Fetch
Mittens! Come on boy; bring the toy back to your master. That’s a good boy,
who’s a good boy?

Friday, August 17, 2012

In case you don’t know who Dave Mustaine is: guitar player
and one of the founding members of Metallica. The band’s nickname in the early
days was Alcoholica because of how much they drank. They kicked Dave out of the
band for drinking too much. Let that sink into your brain for a minute while
you drain your second glass of Chardonnay of the night. Dave then formed his
own band Megadeth and they have been one of the most successful metal bands
around for about 25 years. Dave also graduated, by his own admission, to abuse
of every conceivable drug that can be bought, stolen or manufactured in a
storage shed by men with no teeth and gray skin. After 13 trips to rehab Dave
was finally clean. Good for him and I mean that. But now I’m wondering about
the deleterious effects those drugs had on Dave’s brain.

A few days ago in Singapore,
Dave said that President Obama staged the shootings in Colorado
and Wisconsin just so he could impose a ban on
guns in the United States.
Yesterday on Facebook I saw Joe Lynn Turner post that Dave was speaking the
truth and he offered him congratulations. Oh, Joe Lynn Turner was the singer
for the band Rainbow back in the 80s. I’m guessing even less people know who he
is than know who Dave Mustaine is so I’m assuming his post was mostly a grab
for attention. Well done Joe Lynn, now off you go, back into exile. No, your
Facebook privileges have been revoked for a week, you can’t play Bejeweled
Blitz.

So, let me get this straight: the shooting at the theater in
Colorado and the shooting at the Sikh temple
in Wisconsin
weren’t just random events. Obama, in his down time between dealing with a bad
economy and a presidential election coming in November, hand-picked a whacko
and said “I have a job for you”? Then he sent his new
slice-of-bread-short-of-a-sandwich henchman out to murder people with assault
weapons so he could make a new push to ban them.

The thing about these kinds of conspiracies is the sheer
number of people who would have to be involved and keep their mouths shut. The
president can’t take a dump without a hundred people knowing about it so how would
he stage two mass murders without the following being in on it: secret service,
NSA, CIA, FBI? Now consider that you’re hinging your entire plan on an
unbalanced person. If they carry through with the attack what’s to keep them
from shouting to the world that “President Obama hired me to do this! He paid
me in Snickers bars and expired coupons!” Ok, everyone will just say “he’s
crazy” and move on, but once he opens his mouth, the idea is in your head.

I’m not buying it. Much like the people who want to believe
we never landed on the moon, the whole idea breaks down under the weight of the
number of people that would know the truth and would have to not talk about it.
You can’t tell your best friend that you were once a woman and swear them to
secrecy without them spilling the news to someone the next day and suddenly
your neighbor is calling you “Betty”. It’s human nature to gossip. The
president is not going to be able to perpetrate mass murder and not have
someone screaming about it.

Dave wants his theory investigated. Well Dave, I’m quite
sure there will be an investigation. Get ready for the federal government to
climb up into your ass and camp out there for a while. Those tent pegs are
going to hurt going in.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Now that Mittens Romney has chosen his VP candidate in Paul
Ryan, people keep asking me what I think of Ryan. Hmm. He wants to privatize
social security which in my opinion is one of the most destructive ideas a
politician has ever come up with. He wants to get rid of Medicare which would
injure my mother and every other poor to middle class senior citizen in the
country. His budget, which other republicans eat up like chocolate pudding, has
been called by most economic experts “unworkable” and “a fantasy”.

So, what do I think of Ryan? As I construct my answer I
realize even I can’t say that many swear words in a row and feel good about
myself. He is, in a nutshell, someone I will never understand in a million
years. Maybe it’s because I’m not rich, but I can’t not care about the vast
majority of the American population the way Ryan and Romney don’t. They’re
liars and deceivers. I don’t know how anyone cannot see that.

Mitt Romney made $20 million last year and technically
didn’t have a job. His wife goes on campaign stops filled with run-of-the-mill
working class people and wears a $900 shirt. How do these people who are
cheering for him not vomit all over his designer shoes?

There is a hue and cry for Romney to release his taxes. We
don’t need to see them. We already know he has off shore accounts in the Cayman Islands. He’s a tax cheat. There is no reason to
have accounts in the Caymans other than to cheat the taxman. Again, explain to
me how republican voters aren’t incensed by this. Why would you vote for this
man?

In the 2008 Democratic primary I voted for Hillary Clinton.
I did not believe Obama had enough experience and should have waited to run for
president. When he won the primary I voted for him. I didn’t drink the Kool Aid
of hope and ‘yes we can’, I just knew I couldn’t vote for the politician John
McCain had become. In 2000 I would have crossed my party and voted for McCain
had he won his party’s nomination. But in 2008 he was a different candidate, a
desperate one with no original ideas left. So I voted for Obama. Once again I
had essentially voted for the lesser of two evils instead of someone I really
believed in.

If I had to grade Obama I’d give him a C for his first term.
I don’t think the Affordable Care Act is perfect but at least he did something.
He seems to have surrounded himself with a cabinet of functionaries, but not
visionaries. He didn’t listen to the leading economists about the short comings
of his stimulus package and here we are four years later in very much the same
swamp of unemployment, high gas and food prices and zero confidence that we are
elevating, not descending. I am supportive of his general ideas but his methods
of implementing them are not working.

In November I will once again vote for Obama because I don’t
have a choice. Mitt Romney has only one idea and that’s to make sure he stays
rich. The man can’t think on his feet and his over seas trip recently proved he
was even more inept at foreign policy than Sarah Palin. I wonder if he can see
Europe from Massachusetts?

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Six years ago the planet Pluto was downgraded from planet
status by attention seeking scientists. One of the ridiculous names offered for
Pluto now was trans-Neptunian object. Another was the less eloquent “lump of
rock in space”. They settled on dwarf planet. Recently they have discovered a
fifth moon orbiting Pluto giving the little ex-planet 5 times as many as big
bad Earth, who as of this writing, is still considered a planet by a group of
men and women who can’t even agree on the definition of “planet”. I decided to
ask Pluto his feelings on his many moons and his lesser status, which because
of the lengthy delay in communications between Earth and Pluto, he didn’t even
know about yet.

CO: So, the International
Astronomical Union has downgraded you from planet status . . .

Pluto: What! How?
What? When did this happen?

CO: 2006

Pluto: Crap, my
email service out here is terrible. Damn you AOL.

CO: Sorry to have
to break it to you like this.

Pluto: What did I
ever do to the IAU? I bought tickets every year to their Costume Ball and Fish
Fry even though I obviously wasn’t going to attend, and this is how they repay
me?

CO: Their main
reason was your small stature.

Pluto: Typical.
The little guy is always getting picked on. Every time I pass inside Neptune’s orbital path he tries to consume me. Jupiter
keeps bragging that he has storms bigger then me. I can’t help my size. I am
who I am.

CO: They have
recently discovered your 5th moon.

Pluto: Goody for
them, I already knew it was there. He sings Bread songs all day long. How many
times do I have to hear “Baby I’m a Want You”?

CO: How do feel
about having 5 moons to the Earth’s one, but being designated a dwarf planet?

Pluto: I’m simply
more “attractive”. Get it? Ba dum bum. I’ll be here all week. No, seriously, I
have nothing against Earth as a planet, it’s the scientists. They’ve been
slagging on me ever since Clyde Tombaugh discovered me. Clyde
was my only real friend on Earth. We used to commiserate over personal
problems; his was family stuff mine was the painful itch of asteroids. HA! I’m
killing me.

CO: I didn’t know
you had such a . . . good . . . sense of humor.

Pluto: Oh yeah,
I’ve been working the clubs in the Kuiper Belt for years under my stage name:
Shecky Neptune. I’ll do anything to piss off Neptune,
he’s a jerk. The IAU should reclassify him as a jerk planet. Hey I have to add
that to my act!

Monday, July 23, 2012

I would not want to be a salesman because even when they’re
just doing their job, they can be very annoying. I took my mom to a store over
the weekend and while she looked around I wandered over into the men’s clothing
section. To say it was slightly devoid of customers would be to say I mildly
question Michelle Bachmann’s sanity.

As I looked over a display of Van Heusen polo shirts a
salesman snuck up on me like cocaine found Charlie Sheen.

“May I help you sir?” he asked politely. “Just looking
around” I responded. His face kind of squished up as if he had eaten some bad
curried goat and it was re-entering his esophagus. I thought I heard him mutter
“Great, another just looking asshole. No commission today. Looks like I’ll be
eating the mold off my shower curtain for supper again tonight.” He took out a
mascara brush and painted a smile back on his face.

“Uh, thanks, I guess,” I said, a little weary of the man at
this point.

The salesman started following me around throwing rose
petals at my feet. He pulled out an oboe at one point to play a Beethoven
concerto while I pondered my purchase and was quite good. I wept during the
second movement.

I decided on two shirts, paid, and was met with thunderous
applause from his meaty hands. “Thank you, kind sir. This is the greatest gift
I have received since my father brought me my Xanax from Canada. You are
a prince, sir! If anyone ever condescends to you I will wound them with the
sharpness of my words. If you are attacked physically I will hire a brute to
defend you. If you hunger I will plant for you a field of wheat, if you are
cold I will quilt you a blanket constructed of scenes of our newly formed
friendship.”

The salesman clapped his hands together 3 times. Four burly
men carrying a bamboo sledge ran out from a back room. I was lifted onto the
sled and carried to the sporting goods department while the salesman sang a
madrigal in harmony with a perfume girl. I was taken from the sled and laid on
a bed of goose down. The salesman bowed with an exaggerated flourish finally
walking away. As he did I heard him say to the perfume girl, “The jerk bought 2
shirts, both on sale. My take is $1.50. Looks like unsalted crackers for
lunch.”

Monday, July 16, 2012

I’ll be retiring soon, just wanted to let everyone know. I’m
coming into quite a tidy sum of money so it’s time to move to the beach and
look for change with a metal detector before napping the afternoon away.

We received a check last week. Unknown to us we were part of
a class action lawsuit. Someone sued Google, won a settlement and we get a cut.
It had something to do with Google’s Ad Words advertising program which we’ve
used in the past. Yes sir, right there it was in the mail. A fat, juicy check
for . . . $0.65. Split three ways I am now the proud possessor of 21.6 cents.
Suck on that Google.

It feels good to stick it to the man. Even though
technically I didn’t do anything or even know it was happening, it still feels
good to be on the winning team. I love the smell of litigation in the morning.

Not sure if I should put it all in a money market account or
just invest part of it. I could buy that stick of gum I’ve always wanted or an
ounce and half of Coca Cola. I could always go the real estate route. Maybe put
a down payment on a Bic pen that I will later use to fill out a loan
application. So many decisions to make now. Having money can be a burden.

Monday, July 9, 2012

I am making a motion to the world at large that there cannot
be two different movies of the same name. The fact that we currently allow this
to happen has cost me $4.46. Here is my sad story.

I was listening to an old episode of the radio show Hearts
of Space. If you’re not familiar with it, it is a weekly hour long show that
plays ambient music. Each show has a theme and a mellow-voiced DJ. If you’re
not careful the sound of Steven Hill’s voice will put you to sleep before the
music does.

There is a show from a few years back that showcases music
from movie soundtracks. They played several tracks from the movie “Crash”. That
would be the “Crash” that won the best picture Oscar and starred people like
Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillipe, Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock and many others.
Seriously, there were like 356 people in that movie. The opening credits took
47 minutes just to list their names.

I liked what I heard so I decided to buy the soundtrack. Now
when I say “buy” I don’t mean I will saunter down to my local music store to
hand over a crisp $20 bill and walk out with a square plastic case with a shiny
new CD inside. I mean that I will log on to a web site that originates from a
country not named the United
States and I will purchase mp3s for a small amount.

So I go to the web site and search for “Crash”. A bunch of
things come up but none are the movie soundtrack. Next I went to Amazon to look
for a used copy. I again searched “Crash” and viola; there it was, used for
$1.35. With shipping my total was $4.46.
A few days later my CD arrives. I’m looking at the still pictures from
the movie on the inserts and I think “these people weren’t in Crash”. Yes, I
had bought the wrong soundtrack. Apparently there is another movie titled
“Crash” from 1996 starring James Spader and Holly Hunter.

Now I’m in a huff. The inside of a huff is dark and hot with
the music of Gary Lewis and the Playboys spinning nonstop which just leaves you
confused. I go back to Amazon to find the correct “Crash” soundtrack and they
have it, but even used its $13 and I don’t have that much for a CD right now,
but I do find out the name of the composer. So I go back to my
shall-remain-nameless web site and search under his name and what do I find?
The “Crash” soundtrack I had searched for a week ago and couldn’t find. Crap.